MY ALPHA {18+}

10. MACKENZIE

"How much blood do you need?!" I scowled at Arlo who was filling his third tube.

I was weary of giving him anything after his bullshit memory thing. But he was trying to help Viking's sister and after all the help Viking had given me, I couldn't say no.

"Enough to make sure this works," Arlo murmured.

"Or enough to make Ryken forget more?"

Arlo avoided my glare and kept working. Just as I got dizzy from blood loss, Arlo stopped. He untied the tourniquet from my arm and I leaned back against the tilted bed.

"Why did you do it?" I whispered.

Arlo kept fiddling with test tubes and I assumed he wasn't going to answer. He let out a heavy sigh and turned to me.

"I do what I'm told so I'm not next in the long line of bodies piling up, Mackenzie. He wanted a memory loss serum that directly removed his memories of you. I told him it wasn't going to work. He insisted I make it. But alchemy is not that easy to manipulate," Arlo shook his head.

But his words were easy to pick apart and hope bloomed, "So it won't work forever? It's not permanent?" I leaned forward.

Arlo shrugged, "That's the thing. I can't say for sure. Alchemy is tricky. It cannot bend the will of fate. Cerberus thinks it is easy to destroy a mate bond because he did it. But the difference is he wanted to do it. You and Ryken are not him. You both want the bond, you both already have a connection and you are with child. All of these things play a part. Cerberus doesn't understand that," Arlo admitted, going back to his test tubes.

I frowned and climbed from the bed, watching as he mixed bits of my blood with different substances from the tubes he had. He recorded their reactions as he went.

"Ryken will remember then." I didn't make it a question because I didn't want an answer. I put the statement out there into the universe and hoped that would manifest it.

"I hope so but Cerberus is also determined. It is a messy thing to deal with so many strong wills when trying to balance alchemy like he forces me to do."

Arlo dropped my blood into one of the vials with black blood.

The black turned red.

Arlo sucked in a breath and leaned in closer.

"It changed to red. That is a good thing?" I assumed.

"That was Freya's blood. The other tubes were her skin, her marrow. Other subjects' blood to see the difference. But your blood did nothing to them. This one though, this is promising." Arlo's grin made me smile.

"There is hope for Freya then?"

"There is hope if people are willing to have it. I have no hope. I have no one left to feel it for me and I will spend my days working for Cerberus and doing awful things because he commands it. But for Freya and even yourself? There is always hope."

His words made my broken heart ache for him but I couldn't correct him. Not when he was right.

"Are you going to give her my blood now?" I asked.

Arlo shook his head, "No. Not yet. That was a single test. I will let it cure overnight to see how it reacts but I will need to run multiple variations before being sure."

"Okay," I said eyeing the test tubes of my blood, "If Cerberus asks you to create more serums with my blood-"

"He doesn't know I have anymore. He doesn't know I am using yours to fix Freya. If he did and it worked, you'd never make it out of here alive," Arlo said darkly.